"Desktop" is showing my home folders

[sdhoigt]

I had a drive fail (not the OS one), and my 'Desktop' directory was gone as part of that failure (I had backups--nothing lost).

While my drive was out Mate/Caja did a sensible thing and switched the desktop to show the contents of my Home since 'Desktop' was no longer.

Now I have a new drive in place and my 'Desktop' directory is back. So how can I tell Caja to go back to displaying the contents of Desktop dir?

FYI. I've dug around the dconf-editor (org>mate>caja>desktop) and ~/.config/caja, but haven't seen anything stand out that holds this setting. I.e., what the Mate desktop should show.

Thanks for reading,
SD

[Cosmo.]

Try this:
Open the file manager and make hidden files visible (ctrl-h). Go into the folder .config and open the file user-dirs.dirs.
You find a line saying XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/xxx". In your case xxx is probably missing. xxx should be Desktop. Write Desktop at this place. Log out and back into your account.

[sdhoigt]

Perfect! That was it.

Been using Linux 15 years and still learning.

Thanks Cosmo!

[ericmarceau]

Cosmo's solution is the fix to the same problem encountered on UbuntuMATE 20.04 .

To prevent a repeat of the problem (involving systemd dependencies), you may wish to refer to a preventive solution given as comment/answer to the question posted here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... ices-befor .

[csandrade87]

Try this:
Open the file manager and make hidden files visible (ctrl-h). Go into the folder .config and open the file user-dirs.dirs.
You find a line saying XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/xxx". In your case xxx is probably missing. xxx should be Desktop. Write Desktop at this place. Log out and back into your account.

Thanks! It works for me.